The official line from Germany – as we reported earlier – is one that suggests the expectation of a “Europe-friendly country”.
However, most politicians who have commented on Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy’s predicted win have expressed concern or alarm. The only German party to welcome the result is the far-right AfD.
Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy politician with the conservative Christian Democrat CDU, expressed worry about Meloni’s “openly post-fascist comments” and the “hair-raising views” of her party’s members.
He told the DPA news agency that “racism and the exclusion of minorities should no longer have any place in Europe”.
Katarina Barley, EU Parliament Vice-President and leading politician within Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrat SPD, told German newspaper Die Welt that Meloni’s “electorally tactical lip service to Europe” can’t hide the fact she represents a danger to constructive co-operation in Europe.
Barley said Meloni was worrying because her “political role models are Viktor Orban and Donald Trump”.
Omid Nouripour, chairman of the German Green Party, described the result as “alarming”.
In an interview on German television, he said it was well-known that people in her right-wing nationalist coalition had “very close relations with the Kremlin”.
He said it couldn’t be ruled out that in Moscow yesterday evening, people were also “cracking open the champagne”.
Leading AfD politician Beatrix von Storch meanwhile tweeted: “We are celebrating with Italy! My heartfelt congratulations to the whole center-right coalition.”
She wrote she hoped that together with “our friends around Salvini”, Meloni would “build a strong right-wing government. Sweden in the north, Italy in the south: left-wing governments are so yesterday.”